A little cruel fairytale
by FeliceWZ
Summary: Have you ever imagined what would have happened if it had not gone perfectly right between England and his fairies? Oneshot. Not nice.


_Hello. The idea to this story doesn't belong to me (nothing belongs to me, only the fairies and I don't want to have them), it belongs to Ceri Siracha. This is kind of a sequel to her story Fairystruck. It took me some time to write and even longer to type, and I know it could've been longer, but... well, maybe I'll write even a third version of the same story xD_

_Anyway, AU, warning of Character Death and General Darkness, you know how it goes.  
_

_Hope you like it and visit Ceri's story and leave us something behind :)_

**A little cruel fairytale**

Fire. There was nothing that drew close fairies like fire. Not an ordinary campfire, of course; no, it was that certain passionate gloom in the humans' eyes that was fascinating them to no end. From the day of their birth they desired and envied this uncomprehensible devotion to such profaneous, unstable things like money, fame among other humans or even other humans themselves, since they would never be able to experience it themselves. Soully shaped like their queen, a stunningly ash-blonde, cruel entity looking like the goddess of ice with her milk-white skin, they loved to develop sadistic plans to ruin everything one could possess, even if they weren't equipped with enough of a mastermind to sketch scenarios like she did. No, the minor fairies - or pixies, as they'd been called in the Middle Ages - were responsible for small yet important calamities like a locked window opening in the middle of a thunderstorm, ruining the writer's precious work or the sudden fall of some funds' value or the lady growing disgust at her lover's efforts.\par

They enjoyed to watch the poor humans' struggles and confusion, giggling when their work was declared the hand of God or fate as yet another man clutched their head despairingly, and they would never ever grow tired of it - it gave them an almost sexual thrill. Sometimes, when they were lucky, they even managed to kill some without having to manipulate circumstances and situations, only by their malicious charme. However, that really occurred extremely seldom: Only few humans were able to see the fairies and less were not ignoring them as the result of overtime-work or one bottle too much on the previous night.

Right now, though, a small group of four fairies (no one had actual friends among their kins - when they lacked humans for torturing, their sisters had to be substitutes) was very delighted: They had just found an adorable young lad of seven years, the perfect victim as he had no real friends because of his abnormally large eyebrows and rather odd behaviour. He was full of belief into them and burned with the desire to prove himself, to become someone who would be able to show all of "them" how wrong "they" had been. He easily fell for their sweet lies about pity, care and love, and he trusted them; they were his closest friends, closer even than his parents. The game was too amusing and too entertaining to end it after two or three years like they usually did. It was incredibly satisfying to watch the boy, Arthur was his name, having to go to therapy, resisting to take his anti-depressants and worrying his parents only for their sake. With the years passing, he became formidably cunning and scary, losing his childly innocence to them*, but their greatest power over him also kept him from completely succumbing to thoughtless cruelty: He'd fallen in love with their sister Blanche. Of course they noticed this lack of progress (although, if he'd become a fairy in human shape, they would have lost interest just as well), so at some point, when he was 17 years old, they decided to test his faith since they were now tired of their servant. Allowing them to lead him into the middle of a crowded highway at rush-hour without resistance, he passed flawlessly, not minding that he'd almost have died.

And one fateful night, they decided that it was now time to press the last drops of fun out of him. Blanche, at her prettiest, came to him with a sorrowful expression and, under many tears and sighs, confessed her love to him and seemingly hopelessly asked him whether he agreed to come to the fairyland with her so that they could be together forever.

Poor Arthur was overcome with happiness as he accepted her offer and hastily wrote a short note to his parents. Blanche and her three sisters now led him out of the house and guided him through the brightly lit night-time town, to a grid in a dark dead-end street. "Down there, dearest", Blanche assured him.

When he'd managed to get off the heavy cover, they all went down into London's intestines. The voyage seemed to continue endlessly, and only the sound of Arthur's boots splashing in the canalisation's muddy water, their echo from the stone walls and the fairywings' silent humming were audible while they turned left or right time after time, until they were sure that he wouldn't be able to find the way back anymore. Blanche came to a halt.

"What's it, are we there?", Arthur asked irritatedly. He couldn't imagine the entrance to the fairyland hiding in such a gross place.

"You see, little Arthur...," Ailyn began, bearing a dreadful smirk. "We lied to you."

"No single word I ever said to you was ever true", Blanche sang to the melody of _London Bridge is falling down_, obviously greatly amusing herself.

"Huh? That's some sick joke, isn't it? Tell me it is!"

"Oh no, in no way." May's syrupy voice dripped from the foul rocks. "We never liked you. We've been mocking you since the day you've seen us for the first time. It was all a big... big... lie." With every word she flew some inches closer to his face until she could spit the lie right into his face.

"Oh, but it was very funny indeed, wasn't it?"

They broke out into a flash of shrill, cackling laughter that seemed to tear Arthur's ears. He couldn't believe it. They couldn't possibly be so false. There had to be something behind that, something bigger. Someone else pulling their strings. But why wouldn't they say so, then?

Suddenly all the times when they'd behaved strangely empathyless or annoyed when he'd told them about that A+ he'd scored, or delighted when a child had fallen off their bike and hurt their knee, turned up in his mind, torturing his faith into his little so-called friends.

Their hateful scorn, deriving from their envy on the feelings and lives that humans were able to have made Arthur a feast to them, and on top of the psychical pain that they loved causing him with sharp comments about his naivete, his pathetic love for Blanche, the senselessness of his existance since he would die anyways and his own uselessness, they now started adding physical pain since Blanche had found a knife in the mud. Of course Arthur was taller and stronger than all of them together, but they were very fast and there were four of them, so within a quarter of an hour they had him as far as that he'd bleed to death. Not long after that, he felt dizzy from the blood loss and fell over, unable to defend himself any more, and they ceased the attacks. After all, they wanted to watch him suffering as long as possible before he'd perish.

Two days later a search party that the police had arranged found him there, his face looking innocent but in no way asleep, and yet another file was added to the category Unsolved. After his funeral his parents moved away and nobody ever heard anything from them, although they'd sometimes hear a mocking, shrill voice giggling in their dreams.

* Referring to the British Empire. You can't possibly claim that becoming that is anything but losing childly innocence.


End file.
